The music that we are ashamed to love, and why we love it. Come with us on a journey to the wild world of Shame FM

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Shame #3: Taffy - I Love My Radio

Italo Disco is the ultimate in shameful genres. At least your generic Bee-Gee type disco sold records. It may have been shit but it kept hundreds of producers and record company executives knee deep in cocaine for the entire late 70's. Of course Italo had no actual connection to the genre it shares a name with, especially as it came a good four or five years later towards the mid 80's. The only thing the two share is what the kids call "Hi-NRG" sounds and a predilection for being completely shit.

However delve deeper into the wide world of Italo and you'll find some of the catchiest dance music of the 80's. In fact the genre as a whole rips traditional disco a new a-hole. Tonight we present one of the finest, and most underrated, tracks of it's era. This is Taffy and I Love My Radio

Presumably you will think two things upon viewing this clip.

a) Phwoar Taffy goes alright (may only occur if you're male and can ignore the fact that she's wearing the same hat that Krispy Kreme give out to impressionable children to wear)b) What in god's name has any of the clip got to do with radio? If she didn't actually appear in it herself you'd swear that they'd just lined up stock footage of a day at the drag races. Couldn't they have at least taken her to some rinky dink community station or something? At least she could have driven a 80's model Triple M Black Thunder around the track. Except that she was British and therefore would have no comprehension of the power and majesty of the Black Thunders.

To be fair she does briefly appear in a studio, but then for some reason ends up back inside what appears to be an Ice Cream Van driving around the circuit. But don't let the clip related shenanigans detract from what is an otherwise fine song. Note for the instance the line "now the radio is my mind's new video" which, despite really meaning nothing, cleverly subverts the message in Video Killed The Radio Star. After Buggles declared radio dead Taffy came to us not to bury radio but to praise it. Incidentally this song was a hit in France first, and when it crossed over to Britain they had to edit it so it didn't mention "midnight" radio because barely any stations actually broadcast after midnight.

Let's face it you're never going hear Taffy rocking it in a club no matter how of a retro angle they're trying to get over, but it's certainly catchy. The single edit in the above video chugs along for four minutes and never outstays it's welcome, while the "extended" mix runs for about nine. We recommend that if after watching Taffy do her Penelope Pitstop impersonation you seek out more Italo classics. See for instance Eddy Huntington and Mike "Agent Of Liberty" Mareen. Yes, it's shame music and you won't tell anyone you listened to it but you'll be rewarded if you do.

1 comment:

What is SHAME FM?

Adam 1.0 from The Supermercado Projectwas first exposed to music by way of a rogue Don Lane album which his mother claims to have recieved for free. He then moved onto a pristine copy of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' "Going Places" which had also apparently appeared without anyone actually buying it. He then grew up listening to Gold 104 and as a consequence knows all the words to "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" by Edison Lighthouse. Adam 1.0 has a secret passion for 80's power ballads and is secretly emo at heart.

Elle from Cassettes & Chocolate Milk developed a chilling fascination for shameful music at a very young age. During a six month trip to the UK in 1990, Elle was exposed to an excessive amount of Erasure, Milli Vanilli, The Carpenters and Cat Stevens. As a consequence of this trip, Elle became obsessed with British music. Later, she would develop a famous and largely unrivaled obsession with the band, Queen. To this day, she continues to emphatically contest to their greatness. She frequently exhibits a lack of shame and proprietary in her rants about the lyrical complexity of Roxette demos and the "smudgy" production ethic of Pet Shop Boys b-sides. She lives with cats Rocket, Shui and Ossy the Ocelot.